QuicklyChat (YC S12) Brings Push-To-Talk Video To Small, Remote Teams | Hacker News Reader

QuicklyChat (YC S12) Brings Push-To-Talk Video To Small, Remote Teams

techcrunch.com

64 pointsjmharvey11 comments

The protocol that seems to have emerged with the people I collaborate with is to use Skype and ping the person you want to talk to with a message like "Do you have a few minutes to chat?". If they're busy, Skype just shows they have a new unread message and they can answer it whenever they choose. If they're not busy, the person calls you back. If a long time has elapsed since the initial message, they reply with "Sure, call me if you're free now". This is actually less obtrusive than being in an office because if someone comes to your door and asks "Do you have a few minutes?" it's impolite to ignore them whereas an ignored Skype message just means you're busy or unavailable.

I'm not really seeing the huge benefit here. If you work with others who don't follow such a protocol, set your Skype status to busy and you can't get calls. They'll then have to message you and you can initiate the callback if you're free. And is it really that much of an issue for people to establish calls immediately that there's a compelling need to auto-answer in a mannner that's different from Skype's auto-answer?

There's also the chicken and egg issue... nobody uses QuicklyChat and I can't see anybody I know jumping to use it given that everybody is already on Skype and it's 99% good enough with screensharing, full mobile support, forwarding to a phone number when unavailable, and so on. Plus, potential cross-talk issues: Facebook is likely preconfigured with a "green/ping me" setting but you may be in a Facebook video chat with someone when an auto-answer QuicklyChat session starts from their buddy... now your buddy is an unwanted third party in your Facebook chat. Awkward.

I don't think chicken and egg necessarily applies here. It's not a general consumer app in the sense that it's more likely to be adopted by teams. If I manage a small 10 person remote dev team, I may just tell my employees to all get on it and use it.

That's a valid point for a small team. There's not a lot of friction for them to add an additional chat tool on top of what they already use. I'm guessing that most people's Skype contact list is like mind: various present and former coworkers, family, friends, and so on. These additional contacts beyond the small team are what makes it hard to replace Skype. Everyone's already using a perfectly functional chat tool, so it comes down to whether push-to-chat is that compelling of a feature that you'd pay for it.

Also in terms of a general consumer app vs. a team-based app, perhaps the terminology can reflect this? Instead of a contact being a "buddy" (which doesn't sound professional) what about just calling them "Contacts" and the ones you want to be able to insta-chat with you can be marked as Trusted?

Exactly, the use pattern we've been seeing is teams adopting it all at once.

With respect to biot's comment, a lot of teams have found effective ways to work remotely, but a lot of teams are still looking for more fluid communication channels. QuicklyChat isn't going to appeal to everyone, especially not at first, but it definitely seems like we've struck a chord with a fair number of people.

Fair enough. It actually reminds me of this push-to-talk cell networks that I first saw advertised 15 years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_(cellular_network)

That technology definitely struck a chord with a niche audience. I think the product's name of MiKE was chosen to appeal to male-dominated industries such as construction where it essentially functioned as a walkie talkie with unlimited range.

I'm not a fan of Skype, hence more options are welcome.

Someone could explain me whY he was so heavily downvoted?

Seems like a pretty light innovation to me. I think a more important chat innovation is to know (for sure) if the person is actually online and working versus, online and not working, versus not online at all. Just noticing if the person is browsing the web versus on email is not enough information to know this. For example you can be on a word document creating your wedding invitations or for work. The app will have no clue. It needs to be an accurate record if the person is working or now. Then if you have that accurate record you can do a whole lot more with it as well (know exact times that you start and stop working).

The other potential chat innovation for business is having the teams configured ONE time by the company admin and then all team members are instantly in the correct teams and each person doesn't have to configure their teams.

Also better search of previous team discussions.

I'm guessing the business model will evolve :)

Really nice and simple product. I'm going to give it a try for more personal reasons as Skype has become the bane of my existence.

I've had a similar idea to your automatic status updates: Some sort of contact/buddy list for your smartphone that tells you the best way to reach a particular person at that time. So if a friend is at work/class/gym, the app knows that and sets their status accordingly, displaying that the best and most immediate way to reach them would be text/work phone/gChat/etc.

remote worker with majority of team elsewhere... I was just thinking of something EXACTLY like this... looking forward to see where it goes

I think what's great about QuicklyChat is I can skip the initial IM-tag of "you there?" "free now?" kind of back and forth. While it's relatively quick, it does break my attention and when multiplied by every member of the team it does tend to add up. And I think it's great how it's so simple - that's actually a plus, not a minus, to me.

I LOVE the concept.

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